Ukraine says nearly 300 dead in plane crash
Ampliar
A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777-200. EFE/File
Kyiv, Jul 17 (EFE). Nearly 300 people were killed when a Malaysian airliner crashed in eastern Ukraine, the government in Kyiv said Thursday.
“280 passengers and 15 crew died,” Ukrainian Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko wrote on his Facebook page.
Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it went down in the vicinity of Donetsk, an area of eastern Ukraine under control of mainly ethnic-Russian militias opposed to the government in Kyiv.
In an initial statement, Malaysian Airlines said only that contact with the plane had been lost, but Malaysia’s prime minister, Najib Tun Razak, subsequently tweeted that he was “dismayed” by the news of the crash.
The plane, a Boeing-777, was downed by a missile, Gerashchenko said.
Representatives of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk said its forces don’t have weapons capable of shooting down an aircraft flying at an altitude of 10,000 meters (nearly 33,000 ft.).
Russia’s Interfax news agency reported that members of the Donetsk militias had found numerous bodies at the crash site.